According to a recent Harvard Poll, the majority of young voters do not support the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

An overwhelming 66% of young voters say they are not following the recent uproar of protests, and a mere 33% say that they do. With approximately 21% who are supportive, it is obvious the left has made this movement much bigger than it really is.

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The 2012 election is quickly approaching, but the majority of youth are not inspired by the candidates, on either side of the aisle.

Focus groups recently held by the Harvard Institute of Politics in Iowa exhibited the young voters’ opinions on the upcoming, Presidential election. The majority of the youth were not in full support of any particular candidate, but really, there was an overwhelming lack of support.

Similar meetings were held before the 2008 election, and the outcomes were vastly different. Youth were full of inspiration and awe for candidates like Obama, Clinton, and Huckabee. Now, though, they are left with the after taste of “hope and change” and no one, in their opinion, to faithfully rally behind.

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Dinesh D’Souza once said of Richard Dawkins’ problematic references to history that, “This is what happens when you let a biology major out of the lab.”

D’Souza was on to something, especially judging from a recent Slate article written by famous Harvard biologist and professor Martin Nowak and Harvard postdoctoral fellow David Rand. In it, they explain that America needs “motivation” when it comes to reducing it’s carbon footprint. This article has everything that makes conservatives squirm: love of the Prius, hardcore environmentalism, and longing for absurd government regulation. See for yourself [Caution NSFL - Not Safe For Libertarians]:

This is, after all, the end of the world we are talking about, so why stop there? Why not go full Scarlet Letter? People with more than 2 kids should have to carry signs with them apologizing for over populating our sensitive planet. People who can’t afford $25,000 hybrids, lets call them the “commons”, need to be branded with a “I Cause Cancer” stamp on their forehead.  And if you don’t recycle, Gaia forbid, you should go straight to jail. Wouldn’t that “motivate people to reduce their carbon footprint”?

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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced today that he will retire from Congress at the end of his term. Frank cited a series of scandals as his reasons for leaving–from the prostitution ring that ran from his apartment in the late 1980s; to his role in placing his then-boyfriend in a job at government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae in the 1990s, while Frank was on the House Financial Services Committee; to new questions raised today about Frank’s potential involvement in the unfolding insider trading scandal in Congress.

Frank finally apologized for his role in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2007-8 and set the stage for the worst recession since the Great Depression. Frank had shielded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from regulation, which in turn encouraged banks and buyers to embrace unstable mortgages. These were repackaged and sold as securities whose instability was masked due to their implicit government guarantees.

That’s not actually what happened today, though it is what should have happened long ago. Instead, Frank is retiring because he barely survived a tough challenge by Sean Bielat in the 2010 elections, because redistricting will make it harder for him to hold onto his seat, and because he cannot foresee Democrats re-taking the House. The road ahead is rough, and Frank believes he has better–perhaps more lucrative–things to do.

I am not celebrating Frank’s departure–partly because it is long overdue, partly because it would have been more satisfying to see him defeated, and partly because he is somewhat responsible for launching my political career in an exchange that went viral on YouTube:

As I recalled in Jonah Goldberg’s anthology, Proud to Be Right (HarperCollins 2010): (more…)

Much like their AWOL counterparts at Occupy London, the brave activists of Occupy Harvard–whose presence has caused Harvard Yard to be closed to the general public–apparently prefer the comforts of their dorm rooms to sleeping in their expensive tents.

A Harvard blogger visited the site, only to find Occupy Harvard was strangely… unoccupied:

On the first morning of the encampment, the Harvard Crimson did a photo essay on how things were going on Day 1, which documented about half a dozen protesters on site at around 9 a.m. (here).  So I wondered, how are things going on Day 3? Especially on a day on which classes were not in session, so the members of the movement are able to devote their full attention to the encampment, would a larger contingent of space occupants be on site? Perhaps dozens of space occupants?

So what did I find?  Nothing!  When I arrived shortly before 10 a.m., I found no space occupants at all.  On site were just 2 photographers (including myself) and 2 Harvard University police officers…

Meanwhile, according to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard faculty and students who support the Occupy movement are objecting to the security measures established by the university to keep activists from outside the university from joining the protest.

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Two nights ago, a group of Harvard students set up camp on the soggy ground in front of University Hall, staging an “Occupy” demonstration that has effectively shut down access to Harvard Yard for thousands of local residents, tourists, and at least one mildly amused alumnus.

Photo: Daniel M. Lynch, Harvard Crimson

To keep non-Harvard activists out, the administration has locked the gates to the Yard, posting Harvard University Police Department officers at the few open entrances. Only those showing current Harvard ID may enter. A shadow has fallen on one of America’s most picturesque campuses–on a crisp fall day when bright New England fall colors burst forth from every branch, no less.

The students’ demands are unclear, beyond urging the university to be mindful of its “perceived complicity in growing income inequality across the country.” (Given the rapid increase in economic inequality under Harvard Law graduate Barack H. Obama ‘91, that might not be such a bad idea.)

Regardless, there is something rather pathetic about a spectacle in which 1% of students from across the nation and around the world, having declined to join 99% of their high school classmates in community college, unemployment lines, or Yale, now claim to speak for that downtrodden majority. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Katherine Miller and Mark Jackson to discuss how the Facebook culture has impacted today’s young adults how it will change the institution of marriage for an entire generation.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Theory Tuesday: Facebook and why college students hook-up a lot
More college ‘hookups,’ but more virgins, too
Where Have The Good Men Gone?
Katherine Miller’s Blog: Awkward Awesome

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We Bostonians fancy ourselves a sophisticated, intelligent type of folk, even if it manifests itself in a quirky local vernacular, foul-mouthed self-righteousness and a self-absorbed elitism built upon the glory days of 1775, back when we ruled the school.

New Englanders, for example, boast t-shirts and bumper stickers which tell us that the “Yankees suck” — despite the 27 World Series rings for the Bronx Bombers and the seven for the Red Sox that would seem to indicate that we, in fact, are the ones who suck.

We also call Boston The Hub, as in the Hub of the Universe. That’s right. Our tiny little city’s got megalomania issues … which probably explains why 90 percent of  diversity-loving voters in Brookline and Cambridge pulled a lever for Obama in November 2008. No Bostonian worth his chowder, by the way, has ever called the city Beantown.

The intellectual elitism is so profound here that the average plumber in Boston — and I come from a long, proud line of Local 12 guys — thinks that he’s wicked smaht, smahtah even than a brain surgeon from Alabama. It’s just the way we’re raised — snobbish old blue-blood Brahminism adopted by everyone from Boston’s nouveau riche to the old Irish-Catholic working class.

So the arrival of Sarah Palin in Boston Wednesday was like a visit by an alien being from the planet of idiots in the eyes of the local so-called intelligentsia.

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Last night Andrew Breitbart had a confrontation with AFL-CIO Chief on the Harvard University Campus about Tea Party racism.  Byron York wrote up the exchange at the Washington Examiner:

There was a confrontation last night at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government between AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. Trumka was giving a speech entitled “Why Working People are Angry — and Why Politicians Should Listen” in which he made a number of by-now familiar Democratic criticisms of the Tea Party movement and of opponents of Obamacare. Trumka discussed allegations that protesters spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and hurled racial epithets at Rep. John Lewis as they and other lawmakers walked across Capitol Hill shortly before passage of the Democratic health care bill.

In the question-and-answer session, Breitbart said there is no video or audio evidence of either event happening. Breitbart has, in fact, offered a $100,000 award to anyone who produces evidence that the racial insult actually occurred, and so far he has had no takers.

Until now. As Breitbart spoke, Trumka said he himself had seen the events in question. “I watched them spit at people, I watched them call John Lewis the n-word,” Trumka said. “I witnessed it, I witnessed it. I saw it in person. That’s real evidence.” Here is the exchange between the two men, from the Kennedy School video of the event. (The exchange begins with Breitbart’s question at 38:33.

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Part one of a series

In researching the ever-intensifying Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, it only takes a few keystrokes to unearth her ongoing history of questionable judgment and puzzling prosecutorial decisions.  Even though the election has been effectively nationalized, with some polls showing the underdog Brown within two points or so of the colorless Coakley, she remains largely unknown outside New England.

So as a public service to the voters of the Bay State, during the run-up to the special election on Jan. 19, Big Journalism will be offering some of the Martha’s Greatest Hits, so that they can fully make up their minds whether she would make a suitable successor to the late Edward Moore Kennedy – who, as you recall, began his illustrious career by being expelled from Harvard for cheating, went on to drown Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and then turned to a life of drinking and debauchery, including the infamous “waitress sandwich” with soon-to-be-retired Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, before attempting to inflict “universal health care” on the country shortly before his death last year.

You can read all about Ted here in this classic profile of the last and worst of the Kennedy brothers by the late Michael Kelly.  Be sure to read the whole thing, just to get a flavor of the kind of candidate Massachusetts voters seem to like.

Homework done?  Good.  Because Martha Coakley, the current Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus its top law enforcement officer, is shaping up as a worthy heir to the Lion of the Senate.(more…)